In the past few weeks, I have done two very long runs: the Kepler Challenge race on December 5 and the Milford Track as a self-supported run with two friends on December 14.
I started training for these runs nearly two years ago, and ended up running them nine days apart. They are both by far the longest runs I have done (58 km and 64 km respectively). Previously I have run a few road marathons (42 km), so it was a learning experience both for endurance running and for trail running.
What I learned:
Trail running is way more fun than road running. Road running is dominated by cars and pavement; trail running is dominated by nature and mud.
Long-distance trail running makes the backcountry more accessible. If I can traverse a four-day tramp in a single day’s running, then it opens up all sorts of weekend adventures to remote places.
I do actually enjoy running ultra-marathon distances. (Going into it, I was not sure.) Certainly, they come with additional challenges, but that’s half the fun anyway. (Suffer!) I never see myself running a 100 miler. I would maybe run 80 or 100 km someday, but I don’t feel any particular desire to do so. The main thing is that I have not enjoyed running by headtorch, so I would not want to go out for longer than the daylight lasts. Translation: I wouldn’t rule out longer runs, but only if I’m faster :D
While races are the great gathering places for runners, I don’t like to do them very often, because I become obsessive about my time. I much prefer the high-flying joy of a self-supported adventure run with friends, or the simple pleasure of a weekend run on familiar trails in familiar hills.
It was a bit of a surprise to learn the last point, but it bears acknowledging. Races certainly have their place - they are extremely valuable socially, and they can be incredible motivators - but I just go running with my mates, and I enjoy running enough that I don’t need the extrinsic motivation of a race.
Running the Kepler and Milford so close together was a stark contrast.
I pushed myself hard on the Kepler, and it was the most challenging physical thing I’ve ever done. I wanted to beat my friends’ times from previous years1, or at least post a “respectable” time that I was proud of. I did – I managed to finish in 7 hrs 46 min, which was pretty miraculous given the training disruptions from injuries – but focusing on that detracted from my enjoyment of the run. I absolutely nailed the pacing and could not possibly have run it any faster. The finish line hug from Claire ranked the second best hug of all time, behind the “welcome home” hugs from my family on Christmas 2010 after being away for a year. I cried tears of joy (for the first time since our wedding, I think) and then promptly lay down on the ground for about 10 minutes.
The Milford was a fun day out, by comparison. (The fine weather helped.) When we got tired, we walked for a bit. If we wanted to stop and take a photo, we stopped and took a photo. Having done a similar distance on the Kepler, I was confident I would finish. We ran north to south with a side trip to Sutherland Falls. We finished in 11 hrs 30 min, utterly spent and thoroughly satisfied. After finishing, we waded into Lake Te Anau’s icy waters for a bit of temperature therapy, then had enough energy left to make dinner and tramp a few k’s up the Dore Pass route before making camp. We recovered enough overnight to walk over Dore Pass the next day.
The past two years I have managed very consistently to run three times a week, except during periods of injury with Achilles tendinitis and a sprained ankle. Some observations:
My main observation is that running makes me feel good. A big part of that is due to cutting down on alcohol intake, eating much healthier, and sleeping more consistently, all of which have happened naturally as my body’s wants have changed. That is to say, alcohol has become less appealing, healthy food has become more appealing, and getting into bed has become a highlight of the day.
Overall, I have more energy.
Running is slightly addictive. If I go more than a couple days without a run, I become sluggish and irritable. (This is one reason why injured runners are not great company. Sorry, Claire, and thank you for putting up with me!)
I will look back on 2020 as my year of running. Yeah, the training started in 2019, but the big adventures happened in 2020.
Prioritising running meant easing up on some other hobbies. Due to the pandemic, 2020 was not a big year for performing live music, so that was easy enough as my choirs weren’t performing anyway. (I did play a lot more piano at home.) I stopped making pies so frequently2. Claire and I did some travel within New Zealand, with weekends in Tekapo and Lewis Pass, tramps on the Heaphy and Abel Tasman Coastal Tracks, and a long stay in Te Anau including remote working, but nothing big compared to past trips. So 2020 was the year of running.
I am so grateful that my body permitted me to do so much running this year, and so grateful to my physio for helping me work through achilles tendinitis issues. If you ever need physiotherapy in Christchurch, I highly recommend Sherry at Tower Junction Physio.
I thoroughly enjoyed exploring Christchurch’s extensive network of trails with the trail directory on Wild Things, and look forward to someday completing all the runs in Christchurch and Banks Peninsula. New entries keep getting added to the directory, but I am completing them at a slightly faster rate, so it may happen yet.
I use Strava to track my running. It gave me some stats on my running in the year 2020:
My reaction when I saw these numbers was, “That’s a lot of k’s!”
I have signed up as a volunteer for the inaugural Port Hills Ultra in January, and will be support crew for one of my mates at Coast to Coast in February.
I’ll be joining Mr. Coast to Coast for a training run of Goat Pass in January. After the runs I’ve had in December, it’s nice not to worry about training for a 30 km mountain run… I’ll just turn up and hopefully it will be a pleasant day out.3
The only other event on my running calendar is Kepler Challenge 2021. I want to run the normal course rather than the alternate course, and I want to see how fast I can do it with a proper training block atop a solid base of running fitness.
After building up to the Kepler and Milford runs for so long, I think it will be nice to spend a few months without any particular goals, just running for the sheer joy of it.
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Footnotes:
I didn’t beat anyone’s times - although the comparison is not fair since the 2020 Kepler Challenge was on the (easier) alternate course due to inclement weather. More on that later. ↩
Although, I did dive into the home-bartending world with tiki cocktails during New Zealand’s lockdown… compared to making pies, this was a bigger commitment of $, but a much smaller commitment of time. ↩
Depends how fast my mate is, really! ↩